Writing about sex and porn and porn stars and being a queer, feminist, polyamorous, educated woman can be conflicting. So can life. Join me for reviews of porn and sex products, for interviews with sex celebs and porn stars, for rants and raves, for musings and mewlings, and for trying to work out all the in-betweens.

Feb 10, 2011

Shivers and Shudders over Khan Tusion

Ok, so, yeah, guys, this is what scares me about aggression in blowjobs and in porn in general: it's a blog post on Hey, Epiphora about Khan Tusion's legacy of "edgy" porn that drove women to near collapse. It's upsetting, but it's important to read and think about, because it brings up the fact that, for all the absolutely beautiful, consensual, super-sexy porn that's out there being made by intelligent and responsible people, there's always somebody trying to fuck it all up and prove people like Gail Dines and Natasha Vargas-Cooper right. Porn of this kind is borne of evil and out to help nobody. And it makes me so sad to think about it, hear about it, see it, or be confronted with it that I try to just stay away from it in general.

But staying away from it--ignoring it, in other words--helps exactly nobody, too. The article I'm linking to up above and right here puts together only a minor compendium of the wrongs that Khan Tusion committed against his contracted stars in his heyday, and it's both disturbing and rage-inducing. Because this guy, Mr. Tusion, went around victimizing women on camera for years and because people were willing to ignore the fact that he was obviously going past the point of consent and well into rape and aggravated assault territory, he made money and became fairly successful.

Looking away sometimes just proves anti-porn people's points and allows truly atrocious things to go on. This kind of stuff isn't just upsetting, it's downright wrong and I am depressed as hell to know that it ever happened. This is where porn performers themselves and porn consumers, too, need to stand up for what's right and demand that standards of ethical conduct be applied to everyone who wants to make professional pornography. In an industry that's already everybody's scapegoat for virtually every evil humankind indulges in, keeping people like Khan Tusion (and Max Harcdcore? maybe? I'm pursuing interviews with women who worked with him to get more on that story) out of the mix is absolutely essential. People like him, who are in it to hurt and degrade other people, are the reasons that fears about sloppy blowjobs and misogyny can sometimes be justified. They are the reason that Gail Dines and Shelly Lubben and her ilk can get away with bald-facedly blaming porn for things: because, even though the majority of the industry is ethical and full of lovely people, as long as even a small amount of professional, nonconsensual, violent pornography is being made, distributed, and purchased, that's proof of the caterwauling naysayers' doomsday predictions.